There is this TV show now called “After People”. They could have filmed it with no special effects at my childhood home north of Everett, WA.

It’s kind of hard to watch your childhood home slide from being a brand new house in 1946 to a Meth Lab in 1999 and then get boarded up, torn down, and buried someplace.

I kind of think I know how folks in ghettos like Detroit feel. This happened to a whole city, almost.

This didn’t need to happen. Blame the lawyers. Two of them (Mickie and Michael Jarvill) stole the farm from my dad as he was dying from Leukemia in 1997. Altogether, before they went to federal prison in 2002 they had stolen about $12 million dollars (or more) from all kinds of people and companies.

The Washington State Bar Association was embarassed enough to pay out nearly $300,000 in crooked lawyer compensation monies to some of their victims.

They created Ponzi scheme business parks and skimmed off the money for personal ski trips to fancy resorts. They sold a woman a $500,000 house… only they didn’t give the owner the money… or even tell the owner they were selling it… There were other lawyers too… (my brother calls them “bloodsuckers”) who were involved.

One well know legal leech (Mark Honeywell) was representing Jarvills and my dad at the same time. He was literally helping one client steal money from another client to pay his invoice to the Jarvills. Hope he rots someplace for doing that…. We caught him. He had to recuse himself, only to be replaced by the incompetent boob (Larry F. Brown) who swiped even more money and refused to tell us anything.

The barn was built about 1914 according to the inscription in the concrete water tank out back. Other buildings were built later. The milking parlor was built about 1969 or 70. The swimming pool was brand new in 1968… the year I left to go to college.

It looks like a horror movie now after the bozo the lawyers rented it to (Curt Van Putten) became a serial car thief, chop shop operator, race car driver, meth addict, meth manufacturer, alcoholic, illegitimate father of numerous children without paying child support, and eventually inmate at a couple of prisons. He was one of the biggest meth dealers on the west coast according to the Rolling Stone article in about 2000 or so. Granite Falls High School personnel I spoke with called him “Curt the Cook”.

Currently, the only residents are large owls in both barns. The neighbors have started using the property as their garbage dump… the bums!

Eventually, it will all be gone… and so will we.

2013 update:

United States Attorney Jenny A. Durkan
Western District Of Washington

Snohomish County Gun Trafficking Group Indicted

Felons Sold More than 50 Firearms to Undercover Agent

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

July 10, 2013

Four members of a gun trafficking conspiracy based in Snohomish County, Washington are under arrest after being indicted by the grand jury for illegally selling more than 50 firearms to an undercover investigator, announced U.S. Attorney Jenny A. Durkan. HEATHER CHANCEY, a/k/a HEATHER LEE SLATER, 34, of Marysville, Washington, is charged in 14 counts of a 20 count indictment for gun and drug crimes. MARK JENKINS, 53, of Marysville, Washington, is charged in four counts of being a felon in possession of a firearm, and JAMES MICHAELS, 37, of Marysville, Washington, and CURTIS VAN PUTTEN, 43, of Marysville, Washington, are each charged in one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm. The four were arrested this morning and will make their initial appearances in U.S. District Court in Seattle at 1:30 today.

“These defendants, convicted felons, were selling dozens of high powered firearms with no sales record and no concern about where these guns would end up,” said U.S. Attorney Jenny A. Durkan. “Our region has seen too much heartache come out of the end of guns. Law enforcement will continue to work together to stop the illegal flow of guns into our communities.”

According to the indictment, on multiple occasions between October 2012 and January 2013, HEATHER CHANCEY and her coconspirators sold guns to an undercover law enforcement agent. Most of the sales occurred in the parking lot of the Tulalip Resort Casino in Marysville, Washington. Some of the sales occurred in other parking lots of businesses in Marysville or Arlington, Washington or at a Marysville residence. CHANCEY was prohibited from possessing firearms because of a 2001 conviction for methamphetamine possession. Some of the guns she possessed and sold in this case include: two sawed off shotguns and 13 regular shotguns – some with no visible serial numbers; 21 rifles – some with obliterated serial numbers; and four handguns. CHANCEY is also charged with distribution of methamphetamine and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime. JENKINS, who has a prior felony conviction in Oregon, is charged with illegally possessing five rifles and two handguns. MICHAELS has a 2000 drug possession conviction, and is accused of illegally possessing a rifle. CURTIS VAN PUTTEN has prior convictions for drug possession and possession of stolen property and is alleged to have illegally possessed three rifles.

I was on my way to photograph a spring time event in Granite Falls when I stopped for breakfast at Jakes in Snohomish. Stop by to see the life sized statues of Jake and Elwood inside… and get some good food too while you’re at it.

Anyway , it was only 7:15AM when I was finished and there sat this great rebuild of an American Classic. Couldn’t resist photographing it.

I was not happy with the background and junk behind the fence but unless you have control over these things you need to make do. So here is the before shot… just about 1 hour after sunrise (mountains and daylight time figured in)…

But this was just a snap-shot and I thought the car deserved better. So when I got back to the shop I worked it over a little. Amazingly, I did not work on the car itself… It was dang near perfect.

Top secret info: Canon 5D, 115mm, 1/500 f7.1, -2/3 exposure factor, ISO 250, 7:17AM daylight time, April, 2009, Lightroom and Photoshop 10, 15 layers, and a bunch of other stuff. No retouching at all on the car… except two odd ball reflections in the front chrome bumper from street lights.

Jeff Jackson’s “office” is a rat infested, smelly,
dangerous place. It’s where you throw the stuff you
don’t want to think about anymore: garbage, compost,
people.
Jackson works with one eye over his shoulder as he
wrestles containers weighing up to 700 pounds over to
his waiting truck. Two guys passing through the alley
just minutes before were fighting, drunk, and one
used the space behind the dumpster as a toilet.

Jackson has a daughter in school. He works to support her just like lots of other folks do. But Jeff has another burden… He needs to spend 12 hours week tied up to a kidney dialysis machine so he can stay alive. He believes that if he underwent a transplant operation he would no longer be able to work and would lose his job and ability to care for his daughter.

This was not a long photo shoot but I did some extra work on the files to soup them up a bit…

These photos are part of a story Angies List Magazine had me shoot on a computerized house (pantry, vacuum, lawnmower, door locks, motion sensor, entertainment center, robotic dog, security, cameras, heat/airconditioning). Check out the June issue for the story.